


Coyote Dreams

by lynndyre



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death Fix, Dreamwalking, Gen, Hallucinations, M/M, Post "Hammer of the Gods"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:16:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam want Gabriel back. Kali knows a guy. </p>
<p>'TFL as animals', 'Gabriel de-aged', 'TFL in college', and 'Gabriel wakes up in Misha's bedroom after Hammer of the Gods' all wrapped up as a fixit for HotG.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coyote Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chef_Geekier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chef_Geekier/gifts).



> Written for the Secret Lovers exchange on [TFL](http://team-free-love.livejournal.com/291724.html).

Dean pulled his baby to a stop in front of the Prairie Estates trailer park. They were in desert country, smack in the middle of nowhere. The scrub trees at the fringes of the park hunched low and twisted under the yellow streetlamps. There were yucca plants by the signpost, flowers floating in midair where the Impala's headlights hit them, living up to the name 'ghosts in the graveyard'. Between the rows, out of sight, a small yappy dog barked.

Inside Coyote's trailer was… normal. There was a box of cheerios sticking out of the cupboard over the sink, and a dog-eared John Grisham paperback on the table. Coyote looked like a middle aged Native American guy with greyish hair. "Kali said we should talk to you."

"Ah, about our friend Loki? Or shall we say Gabriel? She did tell me to expect a few visitors."

"She said there was a way to get him back. Because of what he was."

Coyote shrugged. "More because of what he wasn't. A real god is made of belief, tying together the rest of their power. Angels are simply creations of energy. Do you want the physics of it?"

Sam leaned forward, eager. Dean cut him off. "No. What's the angel-reanimation for dummies version?"

Coyote grinned sideways at Sam. "Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form. Theoretically the energy of an angel could be encouraged to return to its intended form."

"Theoretically."

"And practically?"

Coyote tossed Grisham into the curtained area at the back and bent to retrieve a little tabletop brazier from the locker under the seat. It looked like something out of a new age store. "Inhaling certain smokes allows humans to perceive that kind of personal energy on wavelengths they wouldn't normally be able to. Along with lots of hallucinations. But if you genuinely recognize the person you're trying to find, access to that plane of perception should make it possible to find them. Or, for an angel, induce them to reform. Show him what he's meant to look like, as it were."

"Can you give us a minute?" Sam steered Dean outside again, pulling him a trailer-length away before hissing, "You want to take drugs from a guy named Coyote. Who looks like an extra from a John Wayne movie."

"Searchers or True Grit?"

"Dean!"

"You got any better ideas how to get Short Round back in the game? We've got no Cas, no weapons, a hotel full of dead bodies, and a porno. A disturbingly hot porno, but still. This guy was the best Kali had to offer."

Sam made a face like a constipated basset hound. "I'll give you disturbing. Be careful."

Dean smirked. "Always am."

Sam snorted, but let Dean go, waiting just outside so that at least one of them wasn't sniffing the magic god drugs. The trailer door clanged behind Dean with all the grandeur of cheap fiberglass, and Sam was a floppy, mooselike silhouette on the blinds. Dean faced Coyote.

"All set. What do I gotta do?"

Coyote's voice was weirdly high. "Just breathe the smoke. And concentrate on the one you're trying to find. Beyond that.... it's up to you."

Dean sat down, eyeing the little tabletop brazier with its heated rocks. "I feel like I'm in a new age Korean barbeque."

Coyote smiled with teeth just a little too pointed. "That can always be arranged." Dean swallowed, and Coyote's long brown fingers flicked dark powder into the flames. The fire flashed magnesium white, then billowed upward into gold and amber smoke.

Dean blinked, and was in a barn.

***

_He was retreating on four feet, teeth bared at the door. Next to him, Bobby was growling low in his throat. There was something outside, something dangerous. Something they were waiting for. The latches rattled, the hinges shook, and both doors swung wide. A figure stood silhouetted in the opening, small and pale. On chocolate seal-pointed paws it paced forwards, past every marking they had scratched or painted on walls and floor, and overhead the bulbs blew out in a shower of sparks and glass._

_Dean growled as low as he could with the whining of hell still caught in his throat, and dug his paws into the dirty floor. The thing shaped like a cat advanced, locked his line of sight with eyes that were insanely, perfectly blue. Then it opened its mouth, and its voice was ungodly, echoing with broken glass and broken eardrums._

_"I am Castiel. I am an angel of the Lord."_

***

"Bad little human, mind so undisciplined." Coyote's voice yipped derisively in his ear. "Can't even remember who you're looking for. Or are you so eager for every angel you meet?"

The barn dissolved and Dean blinked into the haze of smoke. The walls of the trailer were indistinct.

"What?"

"You are the keeper of his last words, your link is shame and family and obligation and anger. Your energy is close to his. If you want to reclaim your ally, you're the one who has to do this."

The trailer walls weren't there anymore, and the smoke wasn't just amber. It smelled like something Dean couldn’t remember.

***

_Gabriel faced his brother, messy little terrier defiant and ineffectual before the shaggy grey-blond bulk of Lucifer's Irish Wolfhound vessel. It must have been a magnificent animal once, but now the flesh had begun to peel along Lucifer's muzzle and ears, and previously thick fur was distorted and mangy as the skin beneath failed to contain the power inside. The thick fur was stained with the blood of elephant, bird, and dragon, drying thick and blackish red._

_"You're my brother and I love you, but you are a great big bag of dicks."_

_Kali and both Winchesters were out of range, and Kali at least would be taking her pretty little mongoose tail far out of range. For the other two... Gabriel shook his head, a motion that carried down his whole body to his abbreviated tail, and growled. Behind Lucifer, an identical brown and white shape took form, and gathered itself to leap._

_Lucifer's eyes were deep, their gaze holding Gabriel's until the last moment when he spun on the spot, pivoting faster than four paws should have been able, and caught the smaller dog in mid-jump. His jaws snapped shut, fangs flashing angelic silver as they bit deep into Gabriel's body._

_Behind him now, forgotten, the illusion disappeared into blue smoke. Lucifer lowered his catch to the floor with a certain gentleness, licking once across the wounds before meeting Gabriel's eyes again. The Jack Russel panted, desperate, and Lucifer nosed his head up, wolfhound muzzle finding purchase again, firm around Gabriel's neck. His voice was caring, but detached._

_"I'm sorry."_

_And Lucifer bit down, lifted his head, and shook Gabriel like a rat, until the light bled out of him in beams of power and the little furry body dropped to the floor, ashen wings stretching to either side._

***

"This is not designed to cater to your guilt fantasies. You want to find him. To do that you have to be present. Focus. Again."

Dean huffed under his breath. "And what's with all the animals?"

The trailer didn't have a floor. Somewhere over his left shoulder, though, Dean could still feel Sam's silhouette. Waiting. Backup. He sucked in air, breathed greenish latticed potential.

***

_The angel brats were fighting again._

_They'd been fighting off and on ever since they first landed on the hood of the Impala, so Dean wasn't betting on it stopping any time soon. He was about at the point where he could tune out the screeching and flapping noises and get on with his day._

_The scream, though- that was enough to send him running for the yard, even before Sam yelled his name._

_Nobody was in sight when he hit the porch, he had to jump down and circle the cars to find them, wondering what they broke this time. From the looks of it, they broke each other._

_Michael was backed up against the popped hood of a Dodge, frozen like roadkill in headlights, and Sam was on his knees trying to get Lucifer to let go of -fuck- Gabriel. The littlest brat was already bleeding through Lucifer's shirt and soaking Sammy's jeans._

_"Michael, first aid kit, bathroom. Go." His eyes snapped to Dean, and then he bolted for the house. "Living room! Lay it out!" Michael's wings flickered out, in, and he vanished around the corner of the porch._

_Dean dropped to his knees next to Sam. "What happened?"_

_Lucifer looked at Dean, down at Gabriel, up at Dean, but no words come out. Sam pressed his flannel overshirt tighter around what looks like a piece of fucking rebar stuck through Gabriel's stomach. "I think he got in the middle of it. I didn't realize until he yelled, and the car windows busted."_

_"Supposed to stop." Gabriel's voice was clear, confused, and his eyes weren't tracking any of them. "Supposed to love each other. Know you love each other. Why d'you gotta- " He twisted under Sam's hands, made a wounded noise that sounded like a bird call. "Luci, it hurts."_

_Gabriel's hands twisted in Lucifer's shirt, and Lucifer whimpered._

_"Let me take him." Dean slid his hands under Gabriel's to break his grip, then Dean lifted while Sam kept the pressure on. Lucifer stuck as close as a shadow._

_Pulling the metal free made Gabriel scream again, falcon-voiced. But Dean held onto Gabriel's hands, and Sam stemmed the bleeding, and like something out of Highlander the hole started to heal. Thank Somebody for angelic healing._

_Dean let Sam carry Gabriel upstairs. He took a deep breath. Looked at Michael and Lucifer. "I want the whole story. Now."_

_Michael's hands twisted at his sides. "We fought. Lucifer and I. I picked up the metal. I was angry. Lucifer took it away from me. Gabriel got between us, but we didn't. Stop. We didn't stop." He turned on Lucifer, eyes dark. "And you stabbed him."_

_Lucifer stared down at his hands, red up to his forearms. They were shaking. Dean knelt down to meet his eyes. "Were you trying to?" Lucifer shook his head. "Were you trying to hurt Michael?" A headshake, combined with a shrug. Sort of, but only cause we were fighting. That was one Dean knew from experience._

_"Right." Dean wetted the tea towel from the counter, and wiped the smears of red from Lucifer's face and palms. "You'll have to scrub to get it out of your knuckles." Wetness dripped down onto Dean's fingers. He sighed, put one hand on Lucifer's head, and brought it to his shoulder. He let his fingers card through Lucifer's hair, just the once. "Go wash up."_

_Lucifer slid down from the chair and disappeared into the bathroom, and Dean turned to Michael. "Who's the oldest angel here, and supposed to protect his brothers?"_

_Michael wilted slightly, self-righteousness sloughing off into uncertainty. "I am."_

_"And who brought rebar into a fistfight?"_

_The air fidgeted where Michael's wings weren't. "I did."_

_Dean pointed to the bathroom door. "He knows he fucked up. Do you?"_

***

Dean clenched his hands around the edge of the table. There wasn't a tactile memory of Gabriel small and bleeding in his arms, and there sure as hell wasn't one of the feel of Lucifer's hair. It had been finer than Sam's, when he was little. Damn it.

"Closer. But you aren't concentrating. Stop letting yourself be carried by the narrative."

Damn right he wasn't concentrating. What did he know about trying to play Dad, much less to the dickheads trying to destroy the world.

The tabletop wavered between them, and the smoke was greyish purple shot with blue where the light caught. Just the right blue. 

***

_Dean blinked across a different table, staring at Castiel without really hearing him. They were in a cafeteria, like Dean remembered from his days of Sammy-stalking at Stanford. Dean tapped his pencil on the tabletop, and tried to make sense of his notes._

_His sort-of notes. The college-ruled sheet was about a third actual note-taking, a small scribble of Metallica, and the rest of the page was a naked chick covered in... either vines or tentacles. Dean smirked, and made the end of one tentacle look like a dick._

_"Dean! You. Will. Listen. When I am speaking to you." Cas' voice had hit the register that went with 'I will beat your ass', so Dean straightened up in his chair. But not without a mournful look at the line his pencil left across the chick's stomach, from Cas yanking his notebook away._

_Gabriel leant in over Cas' shoulder. "Hey, boobs!" He appropriated the notebook with deft fingers and began shading in the tenta-dicks and the chick's hair._

_Porn in good hands, Dean tried to meet Castiel's look with a straight face. "Yeah?"_

_"I should not be able to talk to you this way. What are you doing, Dean? It's dangerous to be this divorced from your body."_

_The cafeteria was bleeding away, turning into the auditorium in Crawford Hall. Gabriel was sitting in the rows, wearing the janitor's clothes again, still drawing in Dean's book. Castiel was on the stage. Instead of a projector screen, Castiel was pointing to drapes hung up behind the giant porno bed. The image on them wasn't in focus._

_But Castiel hadn't been here. Not this hall, this was years before he'd even met Cas. And suddenly Dean was aware of the dream._

_The projector curtains came into focus, with the picture of a middle-aged lady with black hair putting all five claws of her hand through a guy's stomach. He screamed, but it didn't make any noise._

_Castiel had a laser pointer that circled the screen. "You're almost out of minutes."_

_In the rows, Gabriel peeled a snickers bar like a banana. "You never do read the fine print, do you, Dean-o? Not when you're playing resurrection man."_

***

Coyote's face was longer than before, his body thinner. His eyes were the color you see in the brush at night, beside the road, waiting for the headlights to retreat and the thing you just ran over to die.

"Kali thought you'd willing to help cause you liked him. But there's always another angle, right?" The fear crawling up Dean's spine made it a snarl.

"Kali is a destroyer. She rails against Westerners for their arrogance and can't see her own. Calling a conference on events unfolding across this country without the Gods who were born here! Mercury built a four-star hotel out of a rat infested ruin with magic strong enough to endure past his own death. What reserves do you think he used to do this? Not his own. He pulled that energy from the land, and his life is now beyond reach to redress the balance. Loki's is not."

"Why didn't you take this up with Kali, then? This whole pagan round table thing was hers and Baldur's."

"I am an opportunist." Coyote smiled and sharp teeth flashed behind his lips. "And a realist. I do not pursue prey I do not know I can take down, and I get out of the way of larger fights. With the power of an archangel, we will weather your Judeo-Christian prize fight, and rebuild when it is done. We have shaped this land before."

"Yeah, well, some of us aren't so happy to just throw in the towel, asshole. No way am I handing him over like some kind of holy double-A."

"Your dreamwalk will draw him in. Every time a little closer." Coyote spread his hands wide, and his fingernails weren't nails anymore. "And you can't stop."

***

_Dean was in a bedroom he'd never seen before. There was a guy who looked like Cas, only surgically attached to his phone, and a guy on the bed, getting his face licked off by a very happy dog. And a guy who looked like Sam. Only happier._

_Dean clenched his hand into a fist, and realized the calluses were wrong._

_The guy on the bed, though. That was Gabriel. Not a lookalike. Nobody else met Dean's eyes like that, where 'you again' met 'see how much fun we'll have' and 'fuck off' in equal parts. The drawbacks of making sense to each other._

_Gabriel pushed back the covers and got up, wearing a t-shirt and pumpkin orange boxers that didn't fit._

_"They don't know I don't belong here." He was barefoot, and that was weirder than half-naked somehow. "But you do."_

_Dean's eyes tracked not-Sammy as he kneeled down to ruffle the dog's ears. "Yeah. Your ex pointed us toward a guy who said I could find you." Not-Sammy's smile is so fucking wide._

_Gabriel clicked his fingers in front of Dean's nose, and he smacked Gabriel's hand out of reflex. "Eyes on me, champ. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's universe. Besides, you've got commitments."_

_Not-Castiel was facing Dean, head down, looking at the phone in his hands. Behind it his shirt was beginning to spot with red, but he didn't react. He typed with both thumbs, murmuring as he went, but all Dean could catch was 'mishamigos'. On his chest, the blood had soaked through the white button-down in the shape of a banishing sigil._

_It started to shine, and Dean made a grab for Gabriel's wrist. Met Gabriel's hand reaching back._

_Not-Castiel smiled, and everything turned banishing white._

***

The fire pot exploded, coals bouncing off thin air in front of Dean's face. Suddenly the only smoke was the stinking grey of burning plastics as the tabletop charred and the seat cushion ignited- and the tabletop gained a new centerpiece, in the form of a short, irritating, archangel.

Coyote bared teeth that were no longer anything like human. Gabriel pulled up one knee, relaxed into his perch on the burning table. 

Outside Sam was yelling, and pounding on the door. Dean tried to answer, tried to reach. Couldn't move.

Then Gabriel's wings fanned out, straight through the walls of the trailer. Instead of shadows or lightning they looked like sunlight, and Dean had a brief flash of 'oh, so _that's_ why people would buy he was actually holy'.

Gabriel flapped, once, and the door blew outward. Dean, no longer stuck in place, bolted for the outside air.

He choked on smoke, pushed Sam back towards the overhead streetlamp. From the outside, the trailer looked like somebody'd exploded a meth lab. Sam's hands were red from the heat of the door. Whatever the hell had been in that smoke, Dean could still see shapes moving in the air. He focused on the lamp, on Sam, on the trailer, and ignored his peripheral vision.

Dean had just about managed to get his breath back and convince Sam he was fine when Gabriel followed him out, looking like a normal guy again instead of. An angel.

"We're still missing somebody. Weird face, annoying voice, kept showing up in all my dreams. Follows you around like a-" Gabriel's eyes cut sideways at Dean. "Siamese. Who was that." He snapped his fingers. 

Castiel appeared, wearing nothing but a hospital gown, and fell to one knee in the dust.

"Cas!"

"Dean." Castiel struggled to push himself up again. "Gabriel."

"Hey again, little bro."

Dean grabbed Castiel under his elbow and levered him back on his feet. Sam planted himself beside them. Gabriel eyed all three of them up and down, and nodded once. Castiel's clothes returned to normal. 

Then Gabriel spun around, putting them at his back, and faced Coyote who had appeared again at the end of the row where the desert started. "Are we gonna have a problem?" 

Coyote spread his hands, unthreatening, and two long-legged shapes slunk out of the dark beside him. "No problem. Good to have you back." The two literal coyotes twined back and forth around his legs, tails low and eyes wary.

"Disappointed I broke your trap? Sorry, no plans to play Frodo to your Shelob any time soon. Thanks for the callback, though." 

"You shouldn't have retained this level of power."

"Amazing what a little hands-on worship will do for a guy." Gabriel smirked, and his hand gesture left zero doubt exactly what kind he meant.

Sam gave Dean a sammyface that roughly translated as 'you beat off to _WHAT_ '. Dean glared at Coyote rather than look anybody else in the face. "Shut up, the chick was hot."

"Keep telling yourself that, big boy. You know you love it." 

Gabriel turned in a circle, taking in the whole of the park. Beside them, Coyote's trailer still burned with contained focus, but... no one had reacted. Dean paused, and looked again. The lights that had been on in other trailers when they drove up were dark. There were no voices, no yappy dog, just somebody's TV left on the middle of the night shopping channel.

Gabriel looked disgusted. "And I just figured out what powered your little butterfly net. Tell me again how much better you are than my brothers."

"They're dead," Sam leaned in, pitching his voice low. "Half these mobile homes are empty, but the other half… I was checking things out before the trailer went up, it got quiet. They were still warm. And he was in there with you."

"Different priorities, Gabriel. Mine has always been this land."

Dean snarled, but it was Castiel who spoke. "Ours is humanity."

Coyote still looked calm. "Good luck, then. What you're trying to protect is much easier to destroy."

"Guys. We're leaving." Sam tugged Dean's shoulder, and Dean still had a grip on Castiel's elbow. He snagged a handful of Gabriel's overshirt too, and all but shepherded both angels into the backseat before getting into the driver's side. Sam met Gabriel's amused look over the seat back.

The Impala peeled out of the Prairie Estates barely thirty seconds before the sound of sirens started up in the distance. Beside Coyote another figure watched it go. She was stocky, solid, and her dark hair was greying at the temples in patches. Her skirt and suit jacket screamed 'Human Resources', but her long broad-tipped fingernails said maybe the resources were being used for some unorthodox pursuits. Like fueling a dreamwalk to find an archangel.

Coyote gave her an easy, rueful smile. "Sorry, Badger. Our net broke."

"So I can see. Well, we didn't have much time to plan." Sturdy digging claws scratched behind the ears of one of his companions, and the pup licked up her wrist. "There'll be other hunts."


End file.
